


Amagoi

by antagonists



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 21:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6771319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/pseuds/antagonists
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, he’d taken care of an injured wind spirit whose wings bled from arrows and human grieving. Cared for it tenderly, for it reminded him of his winged master, masked and stoic to his immature pleas. (Still, the memories of black wings stretching imperiously arise whenever he sees great birds in the sky, untethered, free).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amagoi

**Author's Note:**

> asama is so underappreciated what the hell

 

*

 

 

It is the second week of the sixth month, and the nearby rivers are running lower and lower. Where the waters had been up to Asama’s chest a year or two ago, now they swill unsteadily below his knees, glimmering dully to reflect the day sky.

 

Barefoot and holding his robes up with one hand, balancing his staff in the other, Asama closes his eyes against the morning sunlight. Sweat trickles down his brow, but he is unable to wipe it away. This year’s summer has proven to be scalding, and if he weren’t so used to the outdoors, his skin might have burned like it had in the past.

 

Amidst the cry of cicada, the river’s voice is a sad and mulling murmur.

 

He meditates by the waterfall which passes quieter than it had a few summers ago. The trees still stand mightily, creaking in the warm breezes and swaying their dark boughs. Before, the falling waters had been so loud they chased all other thoughts from his mind. Now, he can hear the trill of birds, the whisper of green leaves, the hush of restless spirits still venturing the mortal realm.

 

For them, even though he often finds he would rather listen to the living world, he prays.

 

“It’s hot,” a water spirit calls from below, voice mellow and thin. It stretches a translucent hand towards him, as if it could reach his perch on the dry, dry rocks. It must be parched. “Hot.”

 

“The rains have forsaken you, have they?” he asks politely as the spirit continues to repeat itself. “You poor thing.”

 

“Thirsty,” it says, extending another hand out of the water, then another, and another. “So thirsty.”

 

Asama continues to pray through the spirit’s incessant chanting, sitting still in the sweltering heat. The thin fabric of his robes seem to stick to his skin, more insistent as the sun rises higher and higher. When he at last ceases his prayers and stands, he sways beneath the afternoon light, legs numb and knees aching from kneeling for so long. The untamed spirit has continued to reach its desperate hands towards him, and the waters rise and undulate eerily, thin fingers wavering like candlelight in the wind.

 

He bows deeply before retreating back into the mountains, and the spirit wails shrilly at its broken spell. It falls back underneath as a jade leaf flutters onto the rippling surface, peacefully, as if the angry, life-seeking hands had never been there.

 

*

 

Once, he’d taken care of an injured wind spirit whose wings bled from arrows and human grieving. Cared for it tenderly, for it reminded him of his winged master, masked and stoic to his immature pleas. (Still, the memories of black wings stretching imperiously arise whenever he sees great birds in the sky, untethered, free). The spirit had thanked him, wished to grant him favors and all manners of desires.

 

But alas, spirits of the wind are fickle creatures; after refusing the wishes, he’d been left behind with the stale air at his lips and a ghastly quiet.

 

Asama wonders, sometimes. Is the wind spirit doing well? They always end up getting tangled with other gales, scattering pieces of themselves through the skies, unbound even to themselves. Always changing, storming one day and still the next, pandering at dawn and piercing at dusk.

 

He goes to the small shrine in the mountains to pray and purify the miasma in the rivers.  A soft wind tugs at his robes, whispering, whispering.

 

 

*

 

 

During the third week of the sixth month, he finds a lost demon by the riverbed.

 

“You’re a bit far from home, don’t you think?” he hums pleasantly.

 

The demon picks idly at a scabbed wound on his pale, pale forearm. The skin seems to almost glow in the daylight, and the demon’s hair shines brighter than gold. The robes he wears are made of dark fabric and shadows, glistening with magic that trails behind like dark feathers. “Perhaps so.”

 

Asama seats himself by the demon, slips off his sandals, and promptly sticks his feet into the water. When he catches the demon staring at him, he smiles again. “Go on, the water won’t bite.”

 

Gingerly, the demon uncrosses his legs and dips a curious toe into the river. He must have deemed it safe, since the demon slides the rest of his foot in and wiggles his toes, splashes the water with his other foot.

 

Like a child, Asama thinks.

 

“The rivers are usually livelier,” he says conversationally, leaning back to stare at the sunlight filtering through thick canopy. The leaves cast soft shadows onto the ground. “But we’ve had little rain, and this summer has been very hot.”

 

“You require,” the demon muses, “rain?”

 

At the amusement in the demon’s voice, Asama blinks and turns to stare. He realizes how arrogant he must seem, striding up to a demon to keep it company through his own midday doldrums. After his time mostly alone in the mountains, Asama has grown to care little for what his company is—be it dying wanderers or an errant spirit. It feels strange to speak with anyone other than himself.

 

Asama shrugs, looks away from the red gaze lingering on his face. “Rain has come few and far in between the past seasons. Given enough time, the rivers may dry out entirely.”

 

“I see. And what will happen to you?”

 

“I could move to another mountain that does have water,” he says. “But the trees here, the mountain itself, they cannot move, no?”

 

The demon kicks at the burbling current, and the resulting spray arcs high in the air. Some droplets patter onto Asama’s cheeks, and for a moment it feels like rain. He closes his eyes and can imagine dark clouds roiling over the horizon, heavy and foreboding, hiding the sun behind their misty robes that span across mountains and valleys. Asama opens his eyes, and the blue sky is empty and barren.

 

“I’ve never seen rain before,” the demon admits. “Or many summers here. But it is very hot, I think.”

 

“If you’d like,” Asama says, “I could help you.”

 

“Help me?” the demon repeats, unfamiliar with the notion of a human helping _him_. His eyes glitter amusedly again, and his grin glints sharply in the sunlight. “How so?”

 

Asama exhales slowly while the demon leans closer.

 

“There are rituals,” he says haltingly, glimpsing the demon’s movements in his peripheral.  Sunset irises peer at him invitingly, curiously. “Meant to pray for rain, and to the god of thunder.”

 

Eyeing the charms looked around Asama’s neck, the demon reclines further, flaxen hair catching light and making the air glimmer. _Closer_. “That’s a powerful talisman you have.”

 

“A blessing from a god,” Asama says absentmindedly and fingers the magatama beads strung around his neck, his wrists.

 

“Yet you offer help to me,” the demon says, and when Asama does not reply, the demon laughs. “What a fascinating monk you are.”

 

He splashes the water again, casting brief rainbow sheens over the river.

 

 

*

 

 

When he is meditating one night, Asama feels fingertips brushing against his throat. He stays still against the urge to swallow and opens his eyes to the darkness, finds a looming shadow blocking his view of the moon. Pale hair and skin outlined by silver.

 

“I was wondering,” the demon says, when Asama fails to voice his discontent, keeping cool fingers still against the steady pulse. “If you would make me a charm.”

 

Asama finds his voice. “For?”

 

A lull in the night. The cicada seem to fall silent, as do the rustling leaves, when the demon sighs.

 

“My dead brethren.”

 

Asama takes one hand and gently pries the fingers from his throat, unperturbed at the touch of cold skin. “If you are asking me to bring them back, I—”

 

“Cannot. I know.” This time, fingers press at his forehead. “How about for bad dreams?”

 

“I can create a ward against haunting spirits,” Asama says. “If they are not the primary cause for your nightmares though, I’m afraid it wouldn’t help.”

 

It is hard to see with the moon hidden behind the demon’s back.

 

Without Asama’s prompting, the demon pulls back his fingers. Using sharp nails, the demon scratches characters into the dirt. First, the nine strokes for _god_ ; then below them, another nine for _might._ He goes over them again and again to engrave them deeper into the earth. To leave a memory, to leave a scar.

 

Asama tries the name aloud, finding it odd that a demon has a name of divinity. Demons are relics of prolonged suffering and death, of loneliness and hurting and _want_. Perhaps, in the past, the demon had been a divine spirit, worshipped and at ease with the roof of a shrine above his head. “Do you remember your previous life?”

 

Kamui tilts his head. “People called me a hero, and I’ve been told my father was a god.”

 

A half-god child, then, fallen into dust and darkness.

 

“Do you miss it?” Asama asks, and receives a simple kiss on his palm and night silence in return.

 

 

*

 

 

During the seventh month, summer heat reaches its peak. Louder still are the cicada cries, and the stifling heat makes Asama dizzy if he sits for too long without shade. He has forgone the long robes that cling to his sweaty skin, and decides to meditate near an abandoned stone shrine, lighting numerous sticks of incense to ward away the mosquitos. Here, the sound of the forest overwhelms the murmur of the distant river.

 

He is half-expecting the handful of water thrown at his face when he hears footsteps, wiping at his eyes before glowering at Kamui.

 

“You look dehydrated,” Kamui offers, a thin excuse to cover his mischief. He hefts a bamboo carrying pole over one shoulder, barefoot and only half-dressed. Asama catches himself staring at the uncovered skin and looks away pointedly when Kamui sets the wooden buckets down to sit close.

 

“It’s a long walk from the river,” he says instead and eyes the rippling water. It is a welcome sight with this continued drought coloring him darker and darker with each passing day. “You still didn’t spill much.”

 

The demon cups the water within his hands and drinks. The shed robes sitting at his waist are ebony against his skin, sharp patterns stitched carefully into the fabric. They remind Asama of the people from the north, standing impassively amidst all of the blinding ice and snow and long, cold nights. He drinks once Kamui leans back with glistening lips, eager to wet his parched throat and distract himself. If Kamui weren’t so insistent on conversation, he might be able to concentrate on meditation, but Kamui doesn’t seem to enjoy the silence.

 

Perhaps it gives his hidden memories too much freedom.

 

“When will the rains come?” Kamui asks him, unmoving with the old stone against his back and chin tilted towards the sky.

 

The magatama are warm and heavy on Asama’s chest as he breathes. The talisman is warmer still, and on clear nights it will glow faintly with the sea of stars above. His wrists are heavy with the wooden beads his master had given him, engraved with prayers from the mountain, from the birds and the clouds. He breathes in the balmy air.

 

“Soon, hopefully,” Asama answers, and begins to recite prayers in his head.

 

 

*

 

 

A morning comes where the sunlight does not reach Asama through all the leaves and lurching branches. Cold wind nips at his fingers, familiar and yet not, carrying the smell of rain through the mountains.

 

Dark clouds lumber over the horizon, unrepentant and brooding.

 

“Kamui,” he says, turning to sift fingers through the demon’s hair. “It’s going to rain soon.”

 

When the rain falls and lightning splits the sky, Kamui opens his arms to the storm as if to embrace a brother.

 

 

*

 

**Author's Note:**

> [shinto rite 雨乞い](http://shinto.enacademic.com/13/Amagoi)   
>  [history behind the name 神威](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamuy)


End file.
